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Consolidation Doesn’t Mean Patients Benefit

While the combined data analytics resulting from the merger of a leading insurer and a leading national pharmacy chain have the potential to benefit patients and consumers, sadly the converse is often true.

Nov. 7, 2017 2:56 p.m. ET

Your editorial “Game of Health-Care Thrones” (Oct. 30) describes the motives that may have fed the proposed CVS-Aetna merger and the outcomes that could result from it. Whether in response to government regulation, market dynamics, the consumer revolution or other factors, the business of health care is moving rapidly beyond the model we’ve become accustomed to. Individual actors (like CVS and Aetna) are broadening their roles, and disrupters like Amazon are making moves that could turn health-care delivery upside down. We’ve seen this coming for a while now—hospital systems that double as insurers (Kaiser), retailers...